Dreadfully uneventful. I'll try to be honest and not too rude in my review, as these are the rules, and we must abide by them. I'll just take you through my experience step by step as it happened; I think that would be easier.
The snazzy logo was very eye-catching to start off with, portraying an air of authenticity about it; with some Oriental Hieroglyphics pasted to one side and a hollow yellowy Paya print resonating from the other, over a svelte purply burgundy background. At a glance, you can tell the approach is 'modern Asian fusion' cooking, or something along those lines. Bit of this, bit of that.
The menu was very enticing indeed, so much so that I don't think I will be needing to visit the dentist any time soon, due to the amount of saliva that was created in my mouth as a result of reading the descriptions of the dishes that were on offer. My teeth have never been so white; plaque? What plaque? Not after reading the Paya menu, that's for sure. Golden King Prawn. I dunno, this just conjured up images in mind of an aged Oriental man, with a foot-long double-needled mustache trailing either side of his mouth down towards the deck, sort of Mr Miyagi-looking, whispering sweet-nothings into the ear of his gallant pet Cormorant bird, watching it take flight and sail yonder over the crystal waters afar, before swooping down to scoop up six fresh soon-to-be golden King Prawns from a glassy pristine sky-coloured lake, somewhere, like round the back of the restaurant or wherever.. Upon opening the box, each prawn looked more like an Ace Spades shaped floral design that had been peeled off a 1905 Christmas Cardigan, steam-rolled by a 20-tonne highway maintenance truck, dunked in watered down cowpat, trailed across a carpenter's workshop floor (to get a good coating of sawdust on it), then deep fried in what appeared to be Crude oil. One hour I spent licking my lips on the sofa, in anticipation of these so called 'Golden King Prawns'. I don't think they were even King to start off with, maybe King of the Isle of White or something. Or perhaps they used to be King-sized before the steamroller steamrolled them into the Ace of Spades. This was the first letdown of the meal, and it didn't get any better once I attempted to actually chew on one of these breaded referee-cards. On second thoughts I think I may have to visit the dentist after all. It was literally like chewing on a combination of leather and wood; bit of both. There were definitely more breadcrumbs than there was Prawn, so it was unevenly balanced. But once I managed to get through to the wafer-thin Prawn section, it seemed to taste pretty much like Prawn, barely. There were crumbs flying all over the place; so much so that I had to reach for the bread-basket and place it underneath my chin, to catch them all. I'd collected a small loaf's worth by the end of it. There was a little pot of sauce included in the box. I knew I shouldn't have opened it, but I did anyway, and tasted it. Not quite sure what it was, like a sweet 'n' sour kind of sauce. I didn't like it very much, and so just tried to finish off the Prawns, with a bit of Soy sauce. This starter was a bit of a let down.
Next I tried out the Salt 'n' Pepper deep fried squid, which is one of my favourites. Paya's seemed to be okay; it was alright, kinda nice. Sort of a bunch of mini nugget shaped deep fried Squid bits, which were just a tad on the soggy side, although I suspect this wasn't from the deep frying nor the contents of the batter, but more to do with the oil and the diced onions/garlic etc they were tossed/fried with in the pan. Overall, pretty decent.
Next up was the Singapore fried noodles. This was when things started to go downhill. You would think that the 'Golden King Prawns' would've ended the party a long time ago, but I always give the benefit of the doubt with first time tries, just in case, you know. But these noodles were truly appalling. I dunno quite what was going on here. They looked pretty scrumptious through the see-through plastic container, and smelt pretty good when opening the lid, but it was just all so terribly wrong. The first noticeable visually-evident gatecrashers of the wok, were what seemed like two whole sliced green and red Peppers. I'm not too sure, and I will have to Google some recipes, but I don't re-call any of the scores of Singapore Noodles I've had in my life to contain red and green Peppers, and even if they did, not in this quantity. The noodles were swarming with them. And there were carrots too, masses of shredded carrot. It was like a salad. Things declined quite drastically once the first mouthful was underway. I know the signature flavour of Singapore noodles is that tangy fiery curry powder flavour, led most notably by the use of Turmeric, but this one was taking things one step too far. It was like the chef had replaced the entire contents of the kitchen's Carbon Dioxide fire extinguisher, with Turmeric instead, and just unloaded read more
